Stockton always came ready to play

Suppose you were a player for the John Stockton-Karl Malone Jazz teams of the '90s, and suppose you were feeling a bit of soreness flaring up in your knee just before a game. Not unbearable pain, but enough to give you a limp. And suppose you took that limp into the locker room. Well, there was one quick cure for that hitch in your step—a Stockton stare. "That was all it took," former Jazz center Mark Eaton said. "A guy would come limping into the locker room and he would get that look from John. All the sudden, the limp would go away. He didn't need to say anything. But you knew the way things were in John's eyes. If you could walk, you could play, and if you could play, you were 100 percent." Over the course of 19 seasons, durability was one of Stockton's strengths, and he demanded the same from teammates. He suited up for 1,504 out of a possible 1,526 games. That's one reason he was able to establish an incredible NBA record f...